He realized fully the significance of the extreme to which his course had brought him. If he might only talk to Crowley; if he might only tell him everything, how like a cad he felt, what a cad he believed himself to be, he must sense a deep relief. But would Crowley understand; could he understand? He smiled at the thought the question prompted. Poor old Crowley--Meister Dryasdust--he understand a situation so delicate--so exquisitely delicate? It was absurd. Houston laughed aloud; but the laughter died at once and was like ashes on his lips. He had not deceived Florence; not wilfully; though perhaps in the end it was as though he had. But now the thought that he had not consoled him. Still she had his promise. He had hers as well, to be sure, and in his present state of mind he only wished that she might be as willing as he to forget--he could not _think_, forgive. At the conjecture his pride suffered a shock. Still, if it were only true--if there were even a remote possibility of truth in the circumstance he imagined--that she might have undergone a change; that she might have awakened; that she might have--drifted away. He was coldly analytical enough _now_, to turn back a year and hear himself, as he was _then_, being told by her that she had erred, had made a dreadful _faux pas_ of the whole business. A grim smile curved his lips as the situation presented itself more clearly to his mind. He snapped away his cigarette impatiently. Leaving his room an hour before he had felt cool-headed enough, but now he experienced a growing nervousness with each step he took. It was just such a day as the one on which they had canoed down the river and the promises had been exchanged. Would it not be well, perhaps, he considered, to propose another little voyage, and, perhaps, on the very shelf of rock where they had spread their luncheon--a dainty luncheon it was, he remembered--tell her? He put the thought away at once as absurdly theatrical. No, there was but one thing to do--to go to her, to go to her now, and, like a man, _tell_ her. It would be over with in half an hour--no longer, surely, he thought--and then--how good the air would taste, how blue the sky would seem. He had not noticed where his steps were leading him, but now that a determination to act in the course left open to him had formed, set, and hardened in his mind, he lifted his eyes and looked about him.